Prawn is our rejoice. We chinese can spare the sotong but we can hardly go without prawns in a meal. It doesn't matter whether it's dried, deshelled or fresh, for soup or stir fry. And in most traditional chinese wedding course-dinners, you will be served the legendary steamed drunken prawn, as a token to herald the start of happiness which is represented by the red color in prawns.
But, do you know something? Prawns and cockroaches are related. They ...

Every once in a while, we come across foodstalls with queues that can take up a bit of our time, but have you ever counted, how many times have you joined the queue only to find out that the quality of the food didn't justify the waiting time?
Hong Mao Mian Jia at 128 Tembeling Road
Hong Mao Mian Jia at 128 Tembeling Road is very popular around Joo Chiat area. Although the name suggests that they serve Ang Mo noodles, ...

Once upon a time, a famous Nasi Padang stall stood in the corner kopitiam of Geylang Lorong 1. How famous you may ask? Well the queues were so long that the seller had to introduce a queue number system where customers had to take a card and wait to be called for their orders!
Queue number cards at Former Lorong 1 Geylang Nasi Padang
Alright, I know that sounded a little old fashion but you can't argue with success, can you?
Mr ...

The Teochews are famous for quite a few things. Cultivating the art of preserving food(land infertile so they have to), enjoying seafood's natural taste by steaming it(because they are near to sea so can get fresh ones) and inventing all kinds of kuehs which are the whatever snacks you can find in snack shops like Soon Kueh, Ku Chai Kueh, Png Kueh, Chwee Kueh, Chai Tao Kueh and even Shui Jing Bao and Poh Piah all belong to the Teochew ...

There are some foods in Singapore that are still selling at very competitive prices eventhough prices of every other food have gone up. One of it is Cze Char and I'm talking about those Cze Char Hor Fun or Bee Hoon. Strangely, it has always remained at $3 eventhough other foods like Chicken Rice or Mee Pok Tah have gone up from $1.50 to almost $3 nowadays(I'm talking about past 2 decades).
The other food I know ...

Tik poh(dried sole fish) is said to be a Teochew invention, and it's no surprise that it's mostly only found in Teochew dishes.
Have you wondered how it would be if a Hokkien Mee uses tik poh? I do look forward to the day when some Hokkien Mee sellers bother to throw in a few pieces of tik poh together with the noodles to perform the wok hei. Or if a chok(porridge) has plenty of findly grinded tik pohs sprinkled ...

For someone who resides on the east end of Singapore all his life, I must admit that I grew up eating Hokkien Bak Chor Mee and was introduced to the Teochew version only 10 years ago.
When I first ate Teochew Bak Chor Mee, the tik poh(dried sole fish) taste in the soup simply blew me away. Tik pok as we all know, has a nice flavour and can be very SHIOK when combined with minced pork and liver.
...

Is globalization a good or bad thing for the world? The impact of globalization means that the world has become smaller. So economically, socially, culturally and technologically and in many other ways, there are interactions between different countries. One of the good things, as everyone know is that companies can relocate to take advantage of the attractive markets in other low-wage economy countries(like china) for their production arm. But have you wondered, if production cost has gone down, why then ...

I'll be honest. I seldom eat prawn noodles(soup type) when I'm out. It's not that I'm not a big fan of prawn noodles, but it's hard to find one that's worth my time and money. In fact in most prawn noodles(even the so called good ones) that I know, the prawns they used are quite tasteless after being boiled in the soup for a long long time.
So I'll admit that prawn noodles is one of those food that ...

It is amusing to know how the name Mee Pok Tah is being generalized along the years. Mee Pok Tah is of course Mee(flat noodles) Pok and having it Tah(dry) but what exactly are the condiments or ingredients that are associated with a Mee Pok Tah? What's the difference between a Teo Chew version and a non Teo Chew version? In what kind of circumstances do we expect it to have fishballs or prawns?
Unfortunately there are no straight forward ...

Have you wondered what does it take for a Chicken Rice to be a Hainanese version? Is it the chicken or is it the rice? Must it be "pak cham kai"(steamed/boiled chicken) or it can be roasted chicken?
Of course we all know the irony, that Hainan Chicken Rice isn't indigenous to Hainan and it was the cook who's from Hainan, not the food. But the pak cham kai( white chop chicken) was actually an invention of the Cantonese and ...

I always say that authenticity is a relative term and everyone's measure of it comes in different distinctive forms.
One of Hong Kong's most famous exports, Singapore's Wanton Mee which is so repeated-to-death in our coffeeshops around the island, is detest by Malaysians who surprisingly loathe the idea of adding chilli to spice up their Wanton Mee gravy. For them, the original taste of the gravy is what that should denotes the flavour though the bitterly sweet pitch-black sauce ...

It is often said that, a good plate of chai tao kway(carrot cake) is done using kway(cake of the radish) that must not be outsourced. And I'm just wondering why those franchised chwee kway stalls are still getting the queues when not only the kway(rice cake) but the chai poh and even the chilli sauce are obviously outsourced.
Actually, outsourced food doesn't really mean bad food. When the QC department is doing their job, mass-produced food can still ...

I dare say that Chomp Chomp Food Centre is one of the better place to eat BBQ stingray, even today. Actually there are not many places in Singapore where people specifically go for stingrays. Some of the places I can think of are East Coast Lagoon, Lau Pa Sat, Newton Hawker Centre. Are there any that I've missed out?
Of course we don't go to Newton Hawker Centre for our seafood, Singaporeans are too smart for that. It's ...

Will Malaysia ever dare say that Hokkien Mee was invented by them? Actually, it is very obvious that many foods though have the same names but are clearly referring to different things and flavours in Singapore and Malaysia. Just like Hokkien Mee in Malaysia(which is often called KL hokkien Mee) is yellow mee fried in dark soy sauce while ours are "2-noodles" fried in prawn soup which we also called Hokkien Hae Mee. But then Hokkien Hae Mee in Malaysia ...

Can you think of any food in Singapore that have no more than 20 stalls selling it? Off the top of my head, I can only think of one and it is 猪脚冻 or pork jelly(aspic). Not sure if I'm a suah ku here but I only know of 3 stalls selling it in Singapore.
Then there are other food like Turtle Soup or Beef Noodles which I believe to have no more than 50 stalls each around ...

I am pretty sure that most people know Katong is where they should head for Laksa and Changi is where they should head for Nasi Lemak. So do you know what you should head to Hougang for?
The Teochews, Hokkiens and Hakkas had arrived in Singapore much earlier therefore they were well entrenched in all kind of trades while the Hainanese being one of the 'late arrivals' here due to the 'late opening' of Hainan Island to foreign trade, were ...

What is the cornerstone of Hainanese Curry Rice?
Well the uniquely sweet gooey curry(or a few kinds of sauces in some cases) is the main attraction of most Hainanese Curry Rice. And how did a piece of pork chop get involved? I don't really know but it's not difficult to imagine our Hainanese ancestors dipping pork cutlets into curries in the ship's galley in the past when they were hungry right?
Conveniently, curry and porkchops became fundamental features of ...

For those who have been following this Hainanese Curry Rice Challenge series, I'm sure you will agree with me that the authenticity of any Hainanese Curry Rice is in the relativity of your taste acquisition and cannot be absolutized.
At the beginning, I was bemoaning the fact that I have been missing out on many fantastic Hainanese Curry Rice around the island but yet it clearly wouldn't had made much difference even if I did find them out earlier.
...

I recently had a blast of continuous meals of Hainanese Curry Rice throughout the island and the main reason is as I've mentioned before, to find out how others perform as compared to my favourite one which is the Scissors Cut at Jalan Besar.
Having tasted some of the really famous ones, I think some are a slight exaggeration of the actual quality. Overall I liked some that I've tried for the first time, but I have to say ...